Are Estributors the future of publishing?

I have my own thoughts on the matter, but here's a pretty good article on the subject.

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/07/03/are-estributors-the-future-of-publishing/

I've been spending some time looking at the online presence of several literary agents, and I find it unsurprising that they are about to get their lunches eaten in the digital realm.  They complain about things like poor punctuation in query emails and can't seem to manage a spam filter or an over-flowing inbox even if they have enough savvy to maintain an amateurish website or a blog.  Every single employee at Amazon.com has an overflowing inbox and they learn how to deal with it.  (Hello,  inbox rules?)  The only  thing that makes it a fight at all is their relationships with legacy publishers and their distribution channels.  It will certainly be interesting as those channels begin to dry up.

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